sorry to hear your not having luck with your contour. sounds like a neglected car and that will always lead to problems.

These are really good cars if they are taken care of. knock on the fake wood of my desk, my 95 with 193k is still running stong and gives me little to no problems.

Seriously, poorly taken care of used cars give any car a bad rep... Not the car's fault.

I'm sure there is a solution to repair all your issues without spending a ton... Most fixes are not as expensive as you would think.

-Dom

real sorry to hear you had a bad experience with the tour, i wouldnt even put it on the car as much as ebay, not every one is as honest as they try to act on ebay, perfect example i just bought my nephew a pair of "halo" tail lights for his gmc truck for christmas to our surprise when we openned the box their where no halos and i had to buy the LED panels my self so the bargain i thought i picked up for 60 bucks ended up costing me nearly 200 dollars in the end... well long story short i used to have a mercury mystique that i owned for 4 years and i was a little forget full with the maintance but about the one big thing it did do to me was the fan switch dying on me but it just cost me $14 bucks at auto zone and i fixxed it my self, i loved the car it had a few defects but hey it lasted 4 years probably would have lasted twice as long if i didnt dawg it out like i did but when i bought the car it had 110,000 miles on it and it looked like some one hadnt taken care of it but before i ever took it on a test drive i had my step dad a mechanic of 14 years look at it and what ever he found wrong on it i made the dealer fix before i signed anything, the car ran great till i neglected the transmition till it went out but i did that i drove the car super hard, street racing and such... rule of thumbs when buyin a car never comit to a car with out having it looked at and dont buy cars of ebay if you cant go personally look at it if it sounds to be good to be true 9 times out of 10 it is... for example i bought a 94 honda accord after i thought fords where such a pain, since every one praised them so i ran accross one that was $1500 and i drove it and every thing was great for about a month when my friend looked at it just for kicks on his computer and turns out it was an ugly ducklin with several small problems that would have cost me 300 dollars in all to fix on my mercury to fix about 4 different things to where as the ignition barrel for the key to crank it cost me 220 after taxes alone and then come to find out the wireing harness for the head lights was bad but because the didnt sell just the wires honda wanted $450 just to order it thats when i gave up on that car... it reminds me to keep my eyes open doh because i'm looking for another contour right now and i know how sneaky dealers can be, lol and by the way i find it funny you owned a tempo as well i used to have an 85 tempo i called it the blue bomb cause the muffler on that thing was loud